Editorial: Team Politics in the Cariboo-Chilcotin

In this blog post - I thought I would like at the issue of "team" or, sometimes, slate-based politics in our region, but it will be necessary to do a little background...

Background:

As a rule of thumb - team or slate based local politics are prevalent in the Metro Vancouver and Victoria area. In Rural BC - this is a rarity, but it has happened.  In Kamloops, for example, there was Action '88 where a team-based approach was enough to get 5 out of 9 people elected to Kamloops City Council

Meanwhile - in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, we haven't see this until the 2002 Civic Election of Mayor Rick Gibson with his "team" of former WL City Councillors Patrick Reid, Jon Wolbers and Scott Nelson.  This too was done up in Quesnel in the last little while with Mary Sjostrom, Coralee Oakes and other "team" candidates for Quesnel Council in 2005/2008

In 2008 - a slate of individuals ran in the District of 100 Mile House called "100 Mile First".  The slate was defeated entirely in favour of individual candidates.

Present:

So far - I've heard grumblings that voters' in Williams Lake will face a "Team" election situation consisting of:

"Team Cook" - consisting of Kerry Cook & Geoff Bourdon, Sue Zacharias and Laurie Walters (this was demonstrated at Kerry Cook's Oct 6th BBQ where Mr. Bourdon and Mrs Zacharias/Walters were only invited to this BBQ whereas Surinderpal Rathor was not (no surprise as Rathor has been the thorn in Cook's side this term) and Tom Barr, recently, came out against Staff salary increases...

"Team Nelson" - consisting of Scott Nelson and rumoured WL City Councillor Candidates Mike Jacobsen, Mike Bouchard and Paul Kondola (Editor's Note - Mr. Kondola, Jacobsen and Bouchard have yet to file officiallly and announce to the media with the deadline being Friday at 4pm).

I've not heard of Walt Cobb attempting to form a "team" to be elected to Williams Lake City Council on November 19th

It should be noted that I've had discussions with both Mr. Nelson and Mr. Cobb about the local political issues but yet to have discussions with Ms. Cook, and I'm not likely to have any with her for this election

Final Conclusion:

There are some who think "team" based approaches or slated based approaches to local politics is a major step backwards for our local democracy which is why this approach was refuted outright in the last election when Kerry Cook and Sue Zacharias, Laurie Walters, Natalie Hebert (nee Montoya) and Don Fornwald were rumoured to be running together and each one of them denied this at the local all-candidate forum in early November of 2008.  In the case of the 2002 Election - Rick Gibson along with Scott Nelson, Jon Wolbers and Patrick Reid - this "team" approach was not prevalent or rumoured but was seen in practice - after the election on Nov 16th, 2002

We'll have to wait and see how it plays out in this election, but it'll depend on how each side gets their supporters in bunches to the polls

SBF